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Brunswick Business: Hive Bake Shop

Tastebuds: Visit Hive Bake Shop, a sweet and much-needed addition to Brunswick By Kate Masters - Frederick News Post, 72 Hours, May 31, 2018

Sally Ontiveros, the queen bee behind Hive Bake Shop in Brunswick, never went to culinary school. She left James Madison University with a degree in geographic infosystems and a tight friendship with Katherine Martin — now the head baker at Hive — that the two formed while working at a bakery in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

When Ontiveros decided she’d rather make a living on gâteaus than graphing data, Martin joined her in Lovettsville to scout a location for the new store. Brunswick, a city still waiting for its renaissance, called out to both of them.

“I always liked the idea of coming to Brunswick because it’s just a cool, historic town with a lot of potential,” Ontiveros said. “I wanted to take the sort of shop you might see in D.C. and bring it here so we could have something nice.”

Less than two weeks after its official opening, Hive is still hidden behind a nondescript storefront that’s more gas station than Georgetown. But its products — a varied assortment of well-loved patisserie — mostly demonstrate the elegant execution of bigger-city bakeshops.

Take the shop’s moist coffee cake. When I visited Brunswick to pick up a bag of treats for myself and co-workers, the pastry was still untouched under a pretty glass cake stand. But it came with an enthusiastic recommendation by an employee behind the front counter.

“The coffee cake doesn’t get much love,” he said. “People don’t know what they’re missing. It’s one of the best things here.”

After sampling more than half a dozen treats from the Hive, I have to agree. Rich and buttery, the coffee cake tasted of vanilla and the thin layer of raspberry preserves sandwiched between the tender crumb and light glaze on top. I could imagine eating a big slice of it every morning with a hot cup of coffee, gazing out my kitchen window at the horses in my backyard (this a specific personal fantasy of mine).

Breakfast-oriented pastries are generally a safe bet at the Hive. The store’s delicious apple cinnamon buns were stiff competition against the coffee cake for my favorite pastry of the day. Cinnamon buns have always been one of my favorite desserts — there’s no beating a tray fresh from the oven — but they can be saccharine if they’re not done right. The Hive’s version, filled with tart Granny Smith apples, used the fruit as a welcome foil for the cinnamon sugar and sweet glaze on top.

As for the shop’s Mexican chocolate-filled croissants? “Oui oui!” wrote one of my co-workers. “So flakey.” The laminated dough yielded a crisp exterior and buttery layers of pastry wrapped around rich, semi-sweet chocolate. I wasn’t sure what made it “Mexican” (to me, that denotes chocolate with chili or cinnamon, and I couldn’t pick up any spice) but the treat would make an excellent power breakfast for any femme Parisienne. I also enjoyed one of the shop’s maple scones, which packed in plenty of the syrupy flavor without being too sweet.

Now, onto the not so good. The bakeshop offers a picture-perfect strawberry cheesecake bar, but the taste is disappointing compared with its pretty exterior. When I tried the dessert, its gluey, graham cracker crust totally overwhelmed the tangy cream cheese filling and whipped cream topping. The strawberry on top helped, but not by much.

My co-workers and I also weren’t impressed by a basic vanilla cupcake topped with a mountain of buttercream. The cake itself was moist (if not particularly flavorful), but I was personally deterred by the heavy layer of frosting that coated my tongue with an inescapable wave of sweetness. A blueberry muffin topped with pecan streusel didn’t offer much in the way of flavor or fruit, and I was lukewarm about the shop’s crisp, frosted sugar cookie. The blue buttercream flowers were pretty, but the whole dessert, in essence, was just layer upon layer of sugar.

A better option, by far, are the Hive’s signature “chubbies” — thick chocolate cookies studded with chocolate chunks and walnuts. The tasty treats had crisp edges and a rich, chewy exterior practically begging for a glass of milk. In an ideal world, I’d eat them at least once a week.

I couldn’t commit to ordering an entire specialty cake, but I definitely wasted several minutes drooling over the shop’s Instagram page and its gorgeous, pastel-hued confections. I was particularly taken with a millennial-pink baby shower cake — topped with bright, round macarons — and a gorgeously simple wedding cake crowned by white hydrangea and black-eyed Susans.

I’m also planning on returning within the week to try the shop’s selection of breads. Right now, Ontiveros is turning out ciabatta and demi-baguettes, but she mentioned she might start working sourdough into her regular rotation.

Mostly, I’m pleased as punch that she chose Brunswick as the location for her sweet little bakeshop. The city’s sparse downtown tends to mask its beauty and the wealth of recreational opportunities it has to offer, from the C&O towpath that runs through town to the nearby Potomac River. Someday, it’s going to be Maryland’s answer to Asheville, North Carolina, and that’s a hill I will die on. In the meantime, I’m glad there’s a shop nearby for residents to gather, congregate and enjoy some homemade treats.